If you missed the last one…
I’ve written about stories that might appeal to Sword & Sorcery fans in the Western comics before. I focused on Don Glut because he was by far the best writer at Gold Key (there’s one more Glut here!) There were some from Grimm’s Ghost Stories. Some in Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery. Here are the last of them from The Twilight Zone and Ripley’s Believe It or Not. As with the previous tales, these are not necessarily hard-and-fast Sword & Sorcery so much as Horror tales set in the Medieval or ancient times. There are swords. And sorcery. So I’m happy. I’ve used the phrase “heroic fantasy” which is a little broader than S&S.
You will also find the “portal fantasy”, where a person from our time is drawn into a world of magic. Lewis Carroll brought that into children’s literature from folklore in 1865. Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) opened the door to commenting on Fantasy and other things. Comic book writers borrowed the idea for launching Regular Joes into weird situations. It was a popular trope for dark fantasy. We have one here with “The Singing Sword”.
“The Shadow With Claws” (The Twilight Zone #12, August 1965) was written by Leo Dorfman. This is a long one for Gladiator fans! Flamma is a famous gladiator who fights animals. He buys another slave named Strobius and makes him his heir. Strobius is after Flamma’s gold. He pretends to worship Sekmet, the goddess who protects Flamma, and trains as a gladiator. Eventually Strobius works it so that Flamma dies in the arena. The two men have sworn to leave the arena together. Strobius goes on as a gladiator but is killed by a lion. The ghost of Flamma is there to greet him in death. They leave together.
“The Singing Sword” (The Twilight Zone #35, December 1970) was written by an unknown author. Guy Trevor works at Andre Antiques. He has the job of unloading a new shipment. He finds a sword in theboxes and plans to take it to a museum. (“It belongs in a museum!”) The sword transports him into the past. Cruel tax agents are trampling the crops of the peasants. The sword forces Guy to intervene. He returns to his own time but is pulled back again, this time interrupting an execution. The next time he travels in time Guy steals a necklace from a dead woman. He dies because of this as his body returns to our time. On the sword it says: “He Who Defames This Sword Shall Perish By it.” I guess Guy never read the instructions.
“The Smoke of Death” (Ripley’s Believe It or Not #35, September 1972) was written by Paul S. Newman. In a time before the White Man came to Hawaii, a sacred smoke is used to select victims for human sacrifice. Kahele, son of the chief, is taken to be sacrificed in the Temple of Wahaula. His ghost speaks to his father to come claim his body. The ghost tells the old man to oil his body. When he goes to the temple, the servants of the god can’t hold him. The old chief finds his son’s corpse and returns it for proper burial. The ghost is never seen again.
“Creature in the Iron Mask” (Mystery Comics Digest #10, March 1973) was written by Don Glut. A prisoner is placed in an iron helmet after he enters a strange world beyond a cave. The prisoner fights his way free and escapes back through the cave. We see his face only in the second last frame. (Jesse Santos does an admirable job of hiding it for pages and pages.) He is a good-looking man. The jailers remove their helmets to reveal that the “beast-man” is not the ugly one. Glut is obviously a fan of The Twilight Zone and “Eye of the Beholder”.
“The Guardian” (Ripley’s Believe It or Not #40, June 1973) was written by Paul S. Newman. The Lady Jehane is killed while King Richard is away. Her ghost appears many times through the king’s life and warns him of danger. When Richard dies in battle, his queen, Berengaria, speaks with Jehane’s ghost one last time. Jehane vanishes to be with her Richard. Not really S&S so much as a Medieval ghost story, it does have some battle scenes with the Saracens.
“Musk’s Daughter” (The Twilight Zone #55, March 1974) was written by John Warner. This story is an actual Fantasy tale with Musk the Gnome looking for a husband for his beautiful daughter. The gnome approaches a knight, telling him he is delivering a wagon full of gold to a wizard-king in far off Caristina. The knight agrees to make the delivery for the old one, thinking to take some of the gold for himself. The knight deals with gypsies before returning to the gnome. The daughter springs from the wagon to devour her victim. Walt Simonson would go onto draw more Sword & Sorcery in Thor and Elric.
“The Golden Glove” (The Twilight Zone #59, September 1974) was written by John Warner. 14th Century Germany gives us Baron Hauptman. The Baron wants more gold so he can make himself king. He doesn’t take care of his people, only counts his gold with hand on chin. He hears of a sorcerer who can make gold. He spies on the alchemist, realizing that he uses a magic glove. The baron kills the man and takes his glove. Unfortunately, he touches his own chin, turning himself into a golden statue. The people rejoice when they hear he is gone. A new version of King Midas, of course.
“The Unseen” (The Twilight Zone #65, August 1975) was written by an unknown author. King Nobis is a cruel tyrant in ancient Metasa. He executes a man who warns him of an invisible menace called the Sharaba. He has dreams of an evil lurking over the city. Others suffer the invisible death until Nobis fights it himself. He is no match for the unseen thing. The people flee the city and Metasa is lost to history.
Conclusion
That pretty much wraps up the single Sword & Sorcery tales in Gold Key Comics. I still need to do Don Glut’s Dagar the Invincible but I have been saving it for last. I know Glut has said, like Roy Thomas, that Sword & Sorcery was not his first choice. For Don, it was Horror. For Roy, it was superheroes. Despite that, both men produced some fine heroic fantasy. (Both Horror and superheroes have elements in S&S, for Lovecraft gave Robert E. Howard a weird background for Conan to stomp through. And who is more of a superhero than the old Cimmerian?)
Sword & Sorcery from RAGE machine Books
